Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/73

Rh at these entertainments by the amount of bodily pleasure more than by the intercourse and conversation of friends. In this feeling, our ancestors fitly called the festive meeting of friends at table, as implying union in life, a convivial meeting,—a much better name than that of the Greeks, who call such an occasion sometimes a compotation, sometimes a social supper, evidently attaching the chief importance to that which is of the least moment in an entertainment. XIV. I, indeed, for the pleasure of conversation, enjoy festive entertainments, even when they begin early and end late, and that, not only in the company of my coevals, of whom very few remain, but with those of your age and with you; and I am heartily thankful to my advanced years for increasing my appetency for conversation, and diminishing my craving for food and drink. But if any one takes delight in the mere pleasures of the table, lest I may seem utterly hostile to appetites which